


Chills

by orphan_account



Category: American Revolution RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Black-Eyed Kids (Urban Legend), Creepypasta, Horror, Multi, Podcast Maker AU, Relationship tags subject to change, Urban Legends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-12
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-10-14 09:37:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10533795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The hurricane blasted over his mind and Aaron remembered. The boy’s eyes were black and empty, like holes bored straight through his skull, shadows shifting and twisting in their depths. When Aaron looked down, he could see his left hand itching up to unhook the chain.A lot of urban legends come with the caveat that, now that you know about them, they'll come after you. It's just a hook, a cheap trick to leave you watching over your shoulder, half-expecting to catch sight of a tall, slender figure, or a grinning clown's face, out of the the corner of your eye. Everyone knows that's all it is. And if you do see something-- it's just your imagination. At least, that's what you have to hope.





	1. The Schuyler Sisters

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I've been talking about this for ages, and here it is! Urban legend AU, entirely inspired with a couple of conversations about how in my fairy tale AU's, I've made Alex a human even though he was clearly born to be a cryptid. I think I gave a rough explanation of what you need to know, but feel free to google black eyed kids to learn some more. You know, if you don't value your sleep. Note that this is a lot more horror than fairy tale, so if you're looking for something more like Alexandrite and to the lonely sea and sky, you might want to give this one a miss.

"Not like you to be late, Aaron," Angelica said, without glancing up from her paperwork.

Aaron was absolutely certain that he had made no noise. “I’m sorry, I got held up after class?”

“Are you asking me, or telling me?”

“I got held up after class.” He dropped his satchel by the end table he had been using as a desk.

Before he could sit down, Eliza was hovering over him, her heels making them almost the exact same height. “Did something happen? Are you alright?”

“I’m not eleven any more, Eliza, I didn’t get shoved in a locker.” He consented to her brief examination before sliding into his seat, only to realise that this placed him opposite Peggy’s sharp gaze.

“Any more?” she repeated, lips curling. “You actually got shoved in lockers?”

Angelica, without looking, reached over to swat at her sister’s shoulders. “Like you never shut anyone in a locker.”

“I wouldn’t have done it to Aaron!” Peggy protested. “Look at him, he’s so little!”

Aaron blinked at her. “We’re the same age. And you’re barely an inch taller than me.”

“I’m like, four inches taller than you.”

“In heels, maybe.”

“Children!” Eliza interrupted.

Aaron sat up to attention and swivelled in his seat to face her. Peggy choked on her retort.

Eliza smiled sweetly. “Thank you. Angelica?”

Finally, Angelica put aside her pen and sat up, stretching.

Aaron mused that commanding the attention of three people, two of whom were your own sisters and the third of whom was being paid to tolerate them, should not be an impressive feat, but Angelica wore attention like a cape.

“Let’s begin,” she said firmly. “This isn’t a full briefing, just a research sesh--”

“Unlike every other Thursday,” Peggy muttered.

“ _ Just  _ like every other Thursday,” Angelica continued regardless, “So that we can find and anticipate any pitfalls and deal with them before we all go and get our work done over the weekend.”

Peggy opened her mouth to speak again, before ramming it shut with a jolt. When Aaron glanced at Eliza, she was sitting upright, watching Angelica with her fingers laced under her chin, the picture of innocence.

“So, Aaron, give Eliza your research, and she’s going to write up our new script. I’ll start editing the script for this week— give it here, Eliza—while Peggy does her sound wizard thing with Tuesday’s recording.”

She cast a glance at Peggy, who was watching her with her eyebrows raised in suspicious silence. “No, go on.”

“What about Aaron?” Eliza interjected, before Angelica could respond. “Is he researching for next week?”

If he wasn’t, it would be the first deviation from the norm since Christmas.

“Right, Aaron.” Angelica thumbed through her sheaf of papers in a show of disdain which Aaron ignored entirely. “We’re doing another urban legend!”

“Okay,” he said.

“Would it kill you to show a little enthusiasm?” she asked archly.

Aaron hesitated, forcing his hands not to fiddle with his watchstrap. “Are you sure we should be doing another one? It’s only been a few weeks.”

“I  _ am _ sure, Aaron, these are our highest rated episodes and we still need to find a sponsor.” She tossed back her cloud of hair, clearly not liking his expression. “And anyway, I am the one who chooses the shows, because I am the professional.”

“Aaron’s the only one getting paid,” observed Peggy, who enjoyed nothing so much as starting fights. “Doesn’t that make him a professional?”

She flinched as Eliza gave her another kick under the table, but Angelica’s terrorising gaze was already pinned on Aaron.

“Which urban legend do you want to do?” he asked, a little too quickly. It wasn’t as if they were paying him much. He’d been lured in mostly by the promise of some academic exposure early in his college life, as well as a blossoming crush on Angelica that had turned swiftly to a faint note of terror.

She sighed, forgetting her building temper in favour of annoyance. “I emailed it to you at lunch.”

“I’m sorry,” Aaron said, rather than point out that it was only four.

“We’re going to be doing the black-eyed children,” she told him. Paused a beat, to see if anyone started moving. “Okay then, get cracking!”

Unwilling to be disturbed by the threat of Peggy’s steel-capped boot tapping against his leg, Aaron hastened about opening his laptop and getting on with it.

The first page of search results including promising titles with a vague vocabulary of terror:  _ dying, terrifying, lore, chilling— _

Scrolling too far down, he hit the images, and clicked hastily back up to open a few promising articles and the Wikipedia page.  _ Black-eyed children (or black-eyed kids) are an urban legend of supposed paranormal creatures that resemble children between the ages of 6 and 16, with pale skin and black eyes, who are reportedly seen hitchhiking or panhandling, or are encountered on doorsteps of residential homes. Tales of black-eyed children have appeared in pop culture since the late 1990s. _

Well, alright then. Aaron opened a new word document and entered,

  * _6-16_
  * _Pale skin, black eyes_
  * _1996_



 

He tapped a few more links, and the list grew.

  * _Compulsion abilities_
  * _Come in pairs_
  * _Cancer/nosebleeds/dizziness_
  * _Men in black_
  * _Lost/murdered children?_
  * _Lingering anxiety_
  * _Gobekli tepe_
  * _Come after you when you know about them_



Pain rattled up his leg. Aaron blinked, shaking his head loose from where his gaze had been pinned on the last bullet point.

Peggy was smirking over the table at him. “Something wrong?”

“No,” he said, passively. “Though I’m starting to suspect Angelica wants to kill me off.”

“Like I want to be saddled with the research duty myself,” Angelica said, still scrawling corrections over Eliza’s work. “I’m quite happy in the spotlight, thank you.”

Peggy snorted.  “Spotlight, please, you star on a podcast that can’t get a single sponsor and had a two-minute appearance on a breakfast show.”

“Don’t be rude, Peggy,” Eliza murmured, reaching over the table to catch Angelica’s wrist where she was shaking her hand dramatically at their sister.

“What do you even know, you’re not even in college yet!”

“I’m the same age as Aaron, and you’re  _ paying  _ him!”

“Maybe because he’s actually useful! And he’s in college!”

“That’s hardly an achievement if you two managed it.”

“Excuse me?”

Aaron exchanged a longsuffering look with Eliza, before they reached into their bags in tandem, withdrew their headphones, and got back to work. 


	2. Children

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Visitors come to Aaron in the night. And not in the fun, sexy way. Like, at all.

Aaron was sitting on his bed with his knees folded under him, thumbing through a textbook, when it hit him.

First, the silence. There were still the sounds of cars in the distance. The slow thump of his upstairs neighbour’s bed shaking. The dripping of the tap. But these little sounds were tinny and distant, unreal, as if he were hearing them from an old-fashioned speaker. White-hot silence thumped against his skull.

He set aside his highlighter and looked up as the light began to flicker, shielding his eyes when it flashed too bright for one dazzling moment. Echoes of the glow shuddered against his eyelids, casting the illusion of movement on each of the off-white walls as they drew in on his, oppressively close. The same ripple of motion flashed past the window.

Distantly, Aaron saw his book fall from his hands. He stared at them. Something was nudging at the back of his mind, but he couldn’t quite pin down the thought. The light flickered again. The thumping on the ceiling seemed to draw back into reality, before he realised that it was coming from the hall outside.

Not the bed, then.

Footsteps.

Aaron held perfectly still. One of his neighbours must have a visitor. This was a perfectly common occurrence. It was. And yet, the icy needle-stabs of fear were tingling out from his fingertips and shuddering up his arms, swarming his brain.

A knock at the door.

Aaron froze. Or, rather, Aaron wanted to freeze, but saw, from somewhere very cold and far away, his limbs move of their own accord, standing from the bed and walking towards the door. His hand hitting the cool metal of the latch jolted him back halfway into his senses, and it was from entirely within his own body that he opened the door.

Two boys were standing in the corridor. Both were dark-haired and olive-skinned, one a year or so younger than Aaron, the other a preteen. They were both wearing crisp but grubby shirts, tan slacks, and suspenders. Frowning, he tried to cast his mind back to seeing anybody else in costume that day.

“May we come in?” asked the elder of the two, jolting Aaron from his thoughts.

Aaron was standing in the open space of the doorframe, blocking their path. He frowned. “Sorry?”

“We need to use your phone,” the boy said. “May we come in?”

“There’s a phone at the front desk.” The thought that had been nudging at him was kicking now, screaming.

The lights in the hall fritzed in tandem with those behind him. When they came back on, the two boys seemed to be a little closer.

“There’s nobody there,” the boy said. “May we come in and use your phone?”

“Aren’t you here with someone? Are they looking for you?”

The boy shook his head. “We need to call our mother, so that she can come and retrieve us.”

Aaron bit his lip. There was a reason he shouldn’t let them in. He knew there was. Somewhere. A little voice at the back of his head was wailing like a banshee. “I really think you should wait downstairs.”

“It’s dark outside. My little brother is scared.” The boy stepped forwards a little more. “May we please use your phone?”

Banshee wails grew to hurricane thrashing. “It’s out of charge,” he lied.

“Liar!” Angered, the boy’s head snapped up and their gazes met.

The hurricane blasted over his mind and Aaron remembered. The boy’s eyes were black and empty, like holes bored straight through his skull, shadows shifting and twisting in their depths. When Aaron looked down, he could see his left hand itching up to unhook the chain.

Horrified, he snatched at it with his right hand and stumbled back, tripping over his own feet and landed hard in a sprawl on the floor.

The two boys stared down at him with pitiless black eyes.

“Oops,” said the elder one.

The fear was all-consuming now, a chill shuddering down his spine and the pinpricks of horror scraping at his throat. The breath he tried to draw locked tight against his seizing lungs.

“Philip,” the older boy said, quietly. “Open the door.”

The younger boy’s hand was small. Small enough to reach through the crack in the door, twist around, and unlatch the chain.

Casually, one-handed, the older boy pushed the door open. “Now will you let us in?” he asked, with an indulgent half-smile.

Aaron felt the consent building in his larynx, ready to give them whatever they wanted in the blind, panicky hope that they would let him go. The articles he had been reading were flashing behind his eyes, and the last, horrified echo of rational thought was busy cursing Angelica Schuyler into and beyond her grave.

_ No. _

Aaron screwed his eyes tight shut and shook his head, biting down hard on his tongue before he could let them in.

A few heartbeats passed. He heard a laugh. With agonising slowness, he managed to force his eyes open.

The older boy was crouching down to his eye level in the doorway, whilst the younger craned his neck to look around the hall.

“Clever boy,” the crouching child crooned, his voice soothing and melodious. Aaron’s jackrabbiting heart began to slow, drowsy. “You do want to let us in, though. I know you’ve been reading some very frightening things, but you don’t need to worry about that. We won’t hurt you. Remember? We just want to use your phone.”

His phone. Aaron began to sit up, one hand moving over to where his phone was plugged in.

“No, no, don’t call anybody,” the child continued, black eyes boring through Aaron. His fingers fumbled the phone and dropped it. “Now, if you let us in now, I won’t be angry, and when we’re done, we’ll make sure to call a doctor. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t want to keep us waiting, would you?”

Fear and the compulsion to obedience warred in Aaron’s chest before they were quashed by something new. Outrage. Phone in shaking hand, he pushed himself up and shook his head.

“No,” he insisted, voice trembling. He was not going to be ordered around like this. Not again. “ _ No _ . Get out.”

“You just need to--”

Before the honeyed voice could seep into his mind again, Aaron gave a choking, wordless yell and hurled his phone at the boy. It yelped and slammed the door shut as a shield.

Just like that, the fear was gone. Aaron was afraid, but it was real, coming from him, tangible. The air was less heavy. He could hear cars in the distance.

The knock came at the door again, placid and patient. Aaron stood, still trembling, and sat down on his bed.

It continued, speeding up. He reached over to his radio, and turned it on at full volume. Pressed himself into the corner in the flickering light, pulling his duvet up around him.

He did not expect to sleep, but exhaustion and the lingering hypnosis of the child’s voice dragged him into fitful unconsciousness. He woke aching and stiff, still pressed into the corner. When he built up the courage to stand, praying that it had only be a dream, he caught sight of his phone, on the carpet in front of his door, its screen shattered beyond recognition.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, if any of you died, I accept precisely zero responsibility. Sorry. I just really love horror. 
> 
> Early update because I'm moving this into my Sunday update slot now that [to the lonely sea and sky](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8815861) is over.


	3. Watchers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath.

He went to class. Delivered his research dutifully to Eliza. Wrote his essays.

After three days, he began to notice things.

If he had ever sat down and written a list of places he was expecting to encounter characters from the first creepypasta (it wouldn’t have been the weirdest thing Angelica had asked him to do for minimum wage and a byline), Starbucks would not have even remotely featured on the list. Maybe the little canteen in ikea might have, but a bustling Starbucks, fully lit by the spill of midday sun through the midday sun, tinny pop music tapping at his ears whilst he fumbled for change over a dangerously caffeinated cup of mostly cream would not have been a feature.

As he turned away with his cup, a tall black guy sitting by the stairs turned his head to face Aaron. Reached up and lowered his sunglasses.

A thump on his back send Aaron jerking to avoid spilling his drink as a black-suited businessman’s metal briefcase nudged him roughly aside and out of the line.

When he looked up, the stranger was gone. Aaron clutched his drink in shaking, icy hands, and skittered out of the shop.

Outside, he found himself a bench and sat down, drawing his knees up to his chin. Sipped at his drink. Stared down at his own hands around the cardboard cup. Tried to remember if he had seen—anything—or if he had just seen the sunglasses lift, and panicked.

If the pitiless black eyes boring through his skull were just imagination. Just memory.

A girl of about eight walked by, alone, wearing sunglasses and an old-fashioned checkered pinafore. She paused at the park’s meagre treeline, one hand coming up to trace patterns in the bark.

Her head snapped back towards Aaron.

He jolted, spilling his coffee over his jeans. The sudden heat was enough to tear his gaze off her, as a woman pushing a stroller by hurried over to offer him her packet of tissues. He managed to laugh it off, shaking his head, and walked out of the park in step with her. The urge to look over his shoulder shattered up his spine.

***

“You need to get more sleep, you look ugly as fuck,” Peggy informed him almost before he had managed to fully enter the room.

“Peggy!” Eliza chided.

Aaron knew that it was true. After the nightmare-ridden, unwanted sleep of the night the children came, he had been sitting up under the harsh light of his dorm room until he collapsed from exhaustion. Spent his days fleeing and flinching, hiding around corners from every stranger on the street who had covered their eyes. “I’m fine.”

“You’re fucking not.”

“Watch your language, Pegs.”

“Don’t tell me what to fucking do!”

Angelica might have distracted Peggy, but there was no escaping Eliza concerned gaze as she laid a soft hand on his shoulder. “Are you working yourself too hard, Aaron?”

“I’m fine.”

“I can ask Angie to give you some time off.” Her dark eyes stared down at him, kind and worried.

He flinched. “No. No, I—I don’t want to be alone.”

“Did something happen?”

Before he could respond, Peggy was leaning over the table, almost spilling out of her dress in delight. “Oh my god, you got scared by last week! You’ve been having nightmares, haven’t you!”

Her grin was just a little too sharp, almost predatory. He cringed.

“Leave him alone, Peggy,” Eliza said, pushing her sister back into her own seat.

Before Eliza could stop her, Angelica was taking over. “Wait, it that what happened? You could have said something!”

“You don’t care.” Aaron sat down, opening his laptop on the table.

She shook her head. “Are you kidding? That would have been great material for the show!”

Peggy burst out laughing as, for once, it was Angelica on the receiving end of Eliza’s most disappointed glare. “Angelica! You apologise right now!”

Angelica scowled at Aaron, as if he was the one that had said it. “I’m not wrong,” she snapped defensively.

Even as he curled in on himself under her gaze like a woodlouse under a magnifying glass, Aaron felt his heart rate even out for the first time since the visit. “It’s okay.”

“Angelica.”

“Fine, you’re right, I wouldn’t have used it. It would have been insensitive.” Angelica tossed her hair back.

Aaron ducked his head, not feeling particularly grateful. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Her tone was a little sharp, and hung in the air for several seconds before Eliza finally took her seat and opened up her laptop. “Well, Angelica, I’ve got your—next script,” she amended, looking at Aaron from under her fringe. “It scared me a little too, actually…”

She continued talking, but Aaron was deafened by the lump in his throat. Eliza had read his notes. It hadn’t even occurred to him, through the haze he had been living in. Had she shared them with her sisters? Were they coming for her next, for all of them?

His knuckles went white against the edge of the Schuylers’ kitchen table. No. He had resisted, and if he could, terrified as he had been, surely the three of them would be fine. They were all confident, self-asserted, all the things he had been told were key to success but never quite figured out how to develop. They would be fine.

Something moved past the window, and Aaron flinched. Pretended not to notice Peggy snorting at him.

“Are you even listening?” Angelica demanded.

Aaron ran the last few seconds back through the front of his mind this time. “Pasteurisation?” he asked, vaguely aware that if he had heard wrong this was probably cause to drag him to hospital.

“Get on with it, then!” Angelica fluttered a hand at him, and pulled over the printed script Eliza had produced.

Aaron couldn’t tear his eyes away from it. Eliza had a tendency to doodle on her work, and had filled in the hollows of the lettering in the title. The black circles seemed to float just above the page, staring up at him.

Nothing had happened to the girls. He forced himself not to think that he might be going mad, and, turning his back to the window, began to work. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, the scary parts are so much easier than the dialogue. Screw dialogue. 
> 
> Also, guess who's back at uni! Finally, I can get things done. Also, if you're interested, I'm moonlighting as a smut author (according to some people). It's more that my fixation with metaphor has ascended to an obsession.


	4. The Second Visit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For all he feared it, Aaron never believed that they would come again.

Aaron pushed the door shut behind him with a click, slid shut the bottom lock and the latch, and pulled the newly emptied bookshelf over to hold it shut behind him.

The bleached white walls glared down at him. Aaron ducked his head, reached over to turn up the radio, and started unpacking his bag at the desk. He had pulled it out, now, so that he could sit and work with his back to the wall. Even with the radio softly filling the background, his pen scratches seemed impossibly loud, until they faded tinnily from his focus.

The light flickered almost imperceptibly. His head snapped up. Greyness seeped into the tones of his curtains and shelves of books. His lungs refused to move, plated with unmoving copper plates. His pen clattered, cavernously loud against the desk.

Footsteps, in the hall. By sheer force of will, Aaron pulled out his phone and tapped straight to the number of campus security. Let his thumb hover over the call option.

The knock came. Not a couple of sharp raps like before, but wild, frantic hammering.

The fear was different, this time, tangible but faint. Real and organic. Aaron hesitated, glancing from his phone to the door.

The knocking grew louder. Cursing this new feat of stupidity, Aaron stood up entirely under his own power. Crossed the room, and opened the door.

The older boy from last time stood there again, this time looking up into Aaron’s eyes with the desolate black pits of his own. A girl, with ashy brown skin and long braids, dressed in a pair of red corduroy dungarees and a ruffled white blouse, lay slumped against him, her weight fully on his arms. “You opened it,” he whispered.

“Unbelievably.” Assurance settled over Aaron’s skin like a chill breeze on a stifling summer day. “You’re not making me do anything.”

“I can’t, I’ve rather exhausted myself.”

“So you figured you’d just ask nicely?” Aaron folded his arms, rolling his eyes with sheer force of bravado. “Is she alright?”

The boy shook his head, hard. “No. She’s been hurt. We need your help.”

“Just how stupid do you think I am?”

“I don’t intend to hurt you,” the boy promised. The gaping maw of his eyes gazed forwards.

“I don’t believe you.” Aaron sighed. The girl looked about thirteen. His mind felt faultlessly clear. “What do you want?”

“What do you know of what we do?” he asked.

Aaron shrugged. “Enough.”

“Shall I presume that you know nothing, then?”

“I thought you wanted my help,” Aaron said, flatly.

The boy flushed hotly. “I apologize. May I please bring her in?”

“No.” Aaron tucked both his hands firmly behind his back. “Tell me what you want.”

“Energy. We drain energy. She has none.” The boy spoke in short, clipped notes, biting down on his lip after each phrase as if trying to hold back the next word.

Aaron did not step back. “And you think I’ll just let you?”

“She’s  _ hurt _ !”

“How the hell am I supposed to guarantee I’ll come out of this alive?”

The boy glanced down the corridor, sucking in a long breath through his teeth. “Please. Name your price.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

“You could tie me up?”

“And she could untie you over my cooling corpse.”

“You know we can’t get in if you don’t let us. We can’t escape if you tie us up either.”

“And how do you expect me to verify that?”

The boy, exasperated, slammed his fist against the door. Aaron skittered back with a ragged grasp.

The boy blinked, the gesture disconcerting over the void behind them. “You’re frightened.”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“I don’t know.” He staggered a little under the girl’s weight. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t have the time to entrance a human. My friend is in danger. Will you help?”

Aaron turned his head away from that pitiless black stare. Pulled his phone into view, exiting the phone and running quickly through a few pages in a different app. Then he reached up, unlatched the door, and stood back to let them in.

“Thank you,” the boy said.

“I’ve just set an alarm,” Aaron replied quietly. “If I don’t turn it off within twenty minutes, it’s going to send an alert to campus security, who will come up here to find me. If you don’t want to be seen, you won’t let that happen.”

The boy laid the girl on the bed, and turned towards Aaron with a considering tilt to his head. Then he extended a hand, an oddly formal gesture in a fae as young as his own.

“Alexander Hamilton, at your service, sir.”

Slowly, terrified of the touch of skin on skin, Aaron took it. Soft, dry, icy—but real. “Aaron Burr. Tell me what you want me to do.”

“It’s going to make you very tired, but it should cause no serious damage.”

“Just get on with it.”

Alexander cast about the room, and then crossed it to drag the chair out from behind Aaron’s desk. When he touched it, he fell still and looked over at Aaron. “You truly are afraid, aren’t you?”

"If I let being scared stop me, I'd never get out of bed in the mornings." He snatched the chair and sat down beside the bed.

The other teenager cocked at eyebrow at him, sitting on the bed within reach of them both. "I find myself considering that rather pathetic."

“You shouldn’t insult people you’re asking for help,” Aaron sniped, staring down at the girl.

He flinched when Alexander took his hand, pressing it into the girl’s. Looking up, he saw Alexander’s brow furrow.

And then the pain started, not sharp but still overwhelming, echoing about his skull. He registered, in the distance, a cool hand cupping his jaw and petting soothingly. Aaron grit his teeth and screwed his eyes tight shut, refusing to make a noise. Powered through.

At a faint, breathy noise, he forced his eyes open. Looked down. The girl was stirring. Alexander pulled him back, breaking the contact between them.

Agony faded to manageable, ringing torment. Aaron dragged breath into uncooperative lungs. Tasted blood, and reached up to the watery trails of a bloody nose. He slumped.

Alexander was still looking at him. “Thank you.”

“Look after your friend. I don’t care if you’re here when I get back or not.” Aaron forced himself to his feet, rocking and stumbling, yanking back his arm when Alexander reached for it. He staggered out of the room, forced himself to push through down the corridor to the kitchen, and collapsed, slumping against the window. Almost entirely unaware of his actions, he started busying himself, making tea and checking his section of the fridge, flinching at the bright light inside it piercing his throbbing skull.

The pain had overwhelmed the terror. Slowly, methodically, he forced himself to overcome them both until all that lingered was the dull, steady sense of calm.

Through the kitchen window, he could see that the light in his bedroom was still on. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, got two length/plot directions for this fic I'm vacillating between... it's not my favourite I've done but I don't have much headway on any of my other longer ones. That's why there's no chapter count, btw.


	5. Meetings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'Alive' might be the best thing Aaron could say of his own health at this point.

“What happened to her?”

“I don’t have to tell you that.”

Aaron shrugged, sipping at his overly sweetened coffee as he waited out the shakes. “No, you don’t.”

“Huh.” Alexander snorted, tossing his head back. “It’s complicated, anyway.”

“Okay.” Aaron stretched, rolling his sore shoulders.

Alexander glared, the pitiless blackness where his eyes should have been making Aaron cringe back. “You wouldn’t understand it.”

“Sure.” He didn’t even like sugar in his coffee. It was helping.

The girl was asleep, but moving and breathing, none of the eerie stillness of an unconscious body. Alexander was running his thumb over her hand in steady little circles. “He took too much.”

Aaron stayed silent, tilting his head to the side.

“You’ve read up on us,” Alexander said, defensively. “And anyway, you should have figured something out from the object lesson we just gave you.”

“Yes.” No point being offended by the dismissal. Not when those eyes were still on him—Aaron was aware of them even with his head turned away and his own eyes closed—black and cold like the eyes on the sharks in every stupid movie he’d never seen at the movie nights the others had.

“We take it back to the adults—adults, they call themselves, as though I alone do not outsrrip fully half of them in age, ridiculous. They feed off us in much the same manner as we feed off you, just as we did just now, because we can get in more often. You would have slammed the door right away if it had been, for example, fucking Jefferson and his ridiculous hair standing on your doorstep.” There was a faint rustling sound as Alexander shook his head dismissively. “But he took too much. She got hurt.”

The sudden clipped tone made Aaron look up, even knowing he would regret it. Black maws eating at his soul. “Are you alright?”

“Aside from being a demonic entity who quite recently helped drain the energy of your soul?”

“My what?” Aaron said, blood rushing up his throat as a jagged gasp tore it open.

Alexander laughed at him. “I joke. Even we know little of what we do. I have theories, of course, and I have every faith that in the due course of time they will be proven fully accurate. I simply have been unable to find the time to corroborate such evidence.”

“I’m sure,” Aaron said politely, his gaze catching on the book in Alexander’s hands. It was one of his own, pages curled under absently twitching fingers, the glossy purple cover almost glaring against the greyish tone of Alexander’s skin.

Alexander must have followed his gaze, as there was a soft rustle of movement before he gave a rough laugh. “I apologise, I had imagined I might have rather longer to myself before your return.”

“No worries.”

“No worries,” Alexander repeated, as if tasting the words. “You study this?”

“Yeah.” Aaron glanced back at his desk. The shadows were moving down the wall, now, crawling with inevitable surety towards dusk.

Alexander propped the book up on his lap and continued reading, peppering Aaron with questions which he answered with a sense of vague, cold distance. His speech was—jarring. When he fell silent, apparently engrossed in the test, his hair fell forwards to cover his eyes with a deliberate little shimmy of movement, cutting Aaron’s disoriented musings on how he could possibly be able to see. When he sat like that, he could almost be one of the boys Aaron had crushed on just a year or so ago. Olive skin with a greyish undertone, clinging sharply to the bones of his wrist where it peeped out of his old fashioned shirtsleeves. And then he spoke, and if Aaron closed his eyes, he might have been speaking to his grandfather. Someone’s grandfather, anyway. Not nearly enough contractions, like a character in a bad science fiction movie. Heavy, thudding timbre even at the rattling speed Alexander spoke in. He was inescapably, and absolutely, not human.

When the girl began to move, tossing and turning and mumbling into Aaron’s pillow, Alexander set his book aside, scooped her into his arms, and left without a word.

The tremors barely visible in the light faded to nothing. Aaron stared at the door.

***

That was it. He sat awake, making mindless and likely incomprehensible notes on a textbook, until the buzz of the coffee and sugar wore off and he found himself not too afraid to sleep. The mattress under him was cool, and soft, with the faintest echo of the girl’s shape denting it under his shoulders.

And then he woke. The sun crept past his curtains and painted bright splashes of light on his walls and ceiling. The pipes in the wall creaked ominously, and failed to frighten him. He stared at his hands as he sat up on the bed, watching the little crinkles move in his skin as he flexed his fingers. He dressed himself, made coffee, threw bread in the toaster. Ate it with his gaze fixed flatly on the clock, creeping and jerking ominously towards time to leave. He closed the door just as the second hand hit twelve.

The whiteness of the sky hurt his eyes. The sidewalk was stained dark under his feet, with worms scrambling blindly to reach the soil, after the night’s rainfall. Usually, he would stop to scoop them into the greenery. He walked past.

At precisely 13.22 pm, Aaron jerked properly awake in the middle of a lecture. Through sheer effort, he restrained himself from yelping as he suddenly recognised the gigantic image of the crucifixion being projected on to the screen in front of him, but felt his shoulders jerk back. Eliza, one seat away on the same row, turned to him with her brows pushing together in delicate confusion. He shook his head with a reassuring smile, and started packing away his things. He was going to have to catch up on the first half of the lecture anyway.

When Aaron stepped into the hall, he came very quickly to a dead stop. The light was greyish, imperceptibly flickering. Slowness crept through his veins.

He turned his head to look up and down the corridor, and saw movement flicker at the turn of the corner. “Oh, for the love of…”

He followed.

A hand came down very heavily on his shoulder, and he looked up into pitiless black holes, tidal and unmoving, drawing him in and throwing him back until he staggered dizzily away, shaking his head roughly.

The man smiled. “Hello there, Aaron Burr.”

“Hello.” His voice did not shake. The walls of the corridor constricted around his throat, shuttering at the edges of his vision. The hand was still on his shoulder. But his voice did not shake.

“I've been hearing some simply _fascinating_ things about you, young man,” the man said, lip curling up and a hungry, proud smirk. “Alexander can be rather talkative, when someone condescends to listen to him.”

“I’m sure.” Not fear. He had tasted the fear they brought with them. This was pure, raw, panic. His voice did not shake.

The man laughed, deep and throaty. “There’s no need to be frightened of me. Not if you're even half as intelligent a boy as I thought.”

He said nothing, but tore his gaze away from the gaping blackness, over dark skin and plush brown lips, to fix on the man’s collar. A dark, reddish purple. Odd-looking, thick fabric.

“Though if you are so smart, I’m sure you don't need me to tell you what I'm here to say.” He expects an answer, and Aaron finds his shoulders squaring and his back straightening smartly.

“I won’t tell anyone. If I was going to, I would have done it last week.”

Fingers tightened to claws on his shoulder blade. “I’m sure you won’t. If you do, though…”

Aaron turned to see where the man was looking, straight past him to the heavy soundproofed door to the lecture theatre.

“We have been monitoring you, Aaron. It won’t be hard to get to the people close to you. There only seems to be three of them.”

The man laughed at his own joke again, neat white teeth flashing, and Aaron’s ridiculous first thought was—

“That’s a little harsh.” The laugh slowed to nothing. Aaron pulled up bravado and pooled it in his trembling heart where it prickled and fluttered against the bars of his ribcage. “I don’t intend to tell anyone. But you will leave me, and my friends, alone.”

“Well, ain’t that something.” The man released Aaron and clasped his hand, shaking it with an amicable smile. “Thomas Jefferson. Tell Alexander I stopped by.”

He walked past Aaron, turned to corner, and was gone. No footsteps echoed on the tiled floor. Aaron waited a moment, and then shook his head in disbelief, walking onwards towards the exit. As if he had any way to contact Alexander.

When the cloth came down over his lips, he barely had time to scream in frustration, let alone fear, before he was being dragged backwards, into a van, the doors slamming behind him, and it was too late. A sweet scent, sudden jolting pain, and then nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd apologise, but you all know me far too well to accept it by now. I think we'll be wrapping in a couple of chapters, but always feel free to prompt things over on my [tumblr](http://pennylehane.tumblr.com/%22)!


	6. Search

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Schuylers investigate Aaron's disappearance.

“Well, _I_ don’t buy it,” Peggy snapped, slamming her back down on the table with a rattling thump. “Aaron’s never even spoken about his family. I don’t think he even has an uncle!”

“That would be suspicious, if any of us knew anything about Aaron’s personal life,” Angelica said. She tapped the end of her pen against the book she was annotating, jittering and arrhythmic.

Peggy scowled. “Eliza was _right there_ in the lecture he walked out of. He could have told her if he had to go somewhere. When has he _ever_ emailed you about work stuff?”

“Peggy, there’s no point sitting around speculating. Eliza will find out, it will be nothing, and I can _actually focus_ on doing the research for next week.” Angelica examined her fingernails with an air of false disinterest.

“Which is his job!” Peggy slapped a hand down on the table, making Angelica almost start. “It’s not like he can’t research even if he is on the other side of the country!”

Angelica rolled her eyes, ready to give a scathing response, when the door slammed open.

Eliza, with none of her usual composure, almost stumbled into the table as she rushed in. “I think Peggy might be right.”

“Yes!” Peggy jumped out of her seat, and then seemed to catch up with herself. “Wait, _what_?”

Eliza shook her head. “I asked around, and someone did see Aaron leave with someone, and they said it was a tall black guy in a purple coat, I figured that must be this uncle he was seeing, but—this art student I spoke to, she said she got a good look at him, and—she said he didn’t have eyes.”

“What?” Angelica dropped her book on the table. Leaned forwards eagerly. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m--” Eliza broke off. Angelica realised that her sister was shaking, and grabbed her hand. “I just—Aaron seemed so _scared_ , remember? If something really happened, then maybe if we had just listened to him…”

“Hey. I don’t think anyone can blame us for not jumping to the conclusion that he was being stalked by energy vampires. Or whatever.” Angelica couldn’t stop herself from casting an anxious glance at Peggy’s laptop, where the Black-Eyes Kids recording was waiting to be edited. Tamped down a shudder.

Peggy pulled herself up to sit on the table. “So are we saying we actually believe this?”

“You’re the one that brought it up!”

“Well, yeah, but there’s _hey we haven’t seen Aaron in a while and he’s not answering his phone_ and then there’s _he’s been abducted by aliens_ ,” she protested.

Angelica sighed. “I suppose we can’t exactly go to the police.”

“We should go by his room,” Eliza said, with quiet firmness.

Angelica blinked at her, startled. “Why?”

“That’s where it must have started.” Eliza smoothed back her hair and pulled Peggy to her feet. “And I need to know what happened.”

***

“How do you even know how to pick a lock?”

Alexander froze at the voices outside the door, and the sound of scratching. Scrambled for the sunglasses he had left on the desk.

The scratching was getting louder, could have been excitement as they got closer to success or frustration at the advent of failure. Alexander weighed the odds, and swung the door open.

He looked down at the girl on one knee, still clutching a bent hairpin. “You could knock.”

“I’m so sorry,” began the middle sister. He had seen all three of them before whilst watching Aaron. Never learnt their names. “We were just looking for--”

The eldest snapped out a hand to stop her sister from moving towards him. “Take off your glasses.”

“Excuse me?” Alexander snapped. “Do you not think that might be a little forward?”

The youngest one rocketed to her feet. “Oh my god.”

“Take off your glasses,” the eldest repeated. Voice like iron bars. Slotting herself between him and her sisters.

Alexander sighed. “We both know you don’t want me to do that.”

“Oh my god, oh my _god_ ,” the girl repeated.

The middle sister gaped inelegantly, then rallied. “What did you do with Aaron?”

“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head. “I came here for the same reason you did.”

The older girl folded her arms. “I don’t believe you.”

“Don’t then.”

“Angelica, don’t antagonise him,” the middle sister hissed. She turned back to him, smiling. “Then do you know what happened to him?”

She thought he was lying, of course. Alexander stepped aside, the room now visible behind him. “Yes. Of course I do.”

“Will you tell us?”

The threshold was still protecting them from the chill of fear he exuded. Alexander shrugged. “I see no reason that I should.”

“Listen, you--” the youngest had a hand on his chest and was pushing as she stepped through the doorframe. Angelica must have seen him grin, reached forwards in a panic to pull them back, and crossed it herself. He saw it hit them instantly, greyish pallour creeping over their skin, wide eyes and slack jaws. Terror like a drug, loosening their limbs. Angelica managed to spur a burst of action, pulling her sister back away from him, and slamming their backs to the wall.

Outside the door, the middle sister froze. “What did you do?”

“Your sister attacked me. I have done nothing.” Alexander leaned back on Aaron’s bookshelf, where he could see all three of them whilst adopting an air of casual indifference.

“She barely touched you,” Angelica snapped.

Too many to deal with. “Quiet,” he ordered, with as much focus as he could manage, and turned back to the other sister, still hovering in the doorway. Clever girl. “My name is Alexander Hamilton. And you are?”

“Elizabeth Schuyler,” she said, levelly. Gaze pinned on him. “We know Aaron was last seen with one of you. If you didn’t take him, then who did?”

“A beautiful name. I’m sorry to meet you under such circumstances. The man your friend met with is many things, but he is not a liar. He left that school without Aaron.” Alexander shrugged. “I imagine he was taken by other interested parties.”

“There are more things like you?”

“I would prefer you to monitor your terminology, I could easily become insulted.” He had no intention of hurting anyone, was not entirely sure he could in someone else’s home. She did not know that. “And there are more mundane explanations to every phenomenon.”

“Even you?”

He smiled. “Not at all. I would not recommend that you continue searching in this way, however. There are bodies I would not wish for such lovely young ladies as yourselves to tangle with.”

“I don’t think that’s up to you.”

“I’m sure your friend will be returned to you, in good time.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Evaluating circumstances. Think nothing of it.” He flicked a hand in deference to dramatism, releasing the other two. Angelica quickly shepherded the younger one out.

The girl shook her head in defiance of lingering fear. “I’m Peggy.”

“Delighted.” All three girls crowded back as he stepped out of the door into the corridor. “Feel free to search the room.”

“Wait.” In a burst of bravery, Peggy caught his wrist and turned him to face them. “Is it the government?”

He laughed, genuinely charmed, and pulled away. “I can honestly say that I hope you do not find out for yourselves.”

He walked to the corner, took one look over his shoulder, and stepped out of their sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peggy you conspiracy theorist ily...
> 
> My finals are over, so I'm back to updating regularly! I'm actually in a big writing uptick right now, so I'd really love some [prompts](http://pennylehane.tumblr.com/).


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